Winophilia

Below is the next question we directed at a group of top winemakers and winery owners around the world.  Their responses will be offered in two installments.

What is your single most important requirement in a bottle of wine you drink for pleasure?

Tony Soter, Soter Vineyards (Oregon). Compulsive drinkability is the quality I most appreciate in a wine drunk for pleasure. It is surprising, actually, how few wines exhibit this attribute. I am speaking of the natural response to swallow, to raise the glass again and realize you need a refill before you even bother to notice the finer points of the wine. It’s visceral, not intellectual. A wine like this seems to make an instinctual connection to your pleasure sites: you don’t have to analyze it to be sure it fits your list of model wine attributes. It takes no convincing; it’s demonstrable in the simple act of drinking.

Etienne de Montille, Domaine de Montille (France). To have the next bottle ready. Pleasure is pleasure and there is never enough. It’s a great moment of joy when you see the glasses and bottle empty and thirsty friends are still around. Time to go back to the cellar!

Brian Bicknell, Mahi Wines (New Zealand). For me the key is palate texture.  While the nose is of interest, I am so much more focused on texture. The tactile sensation as the wine passes over my palate is what does it for me, what keeps me going back to a particular wine or variety. Wine is a hedonistic love and pastime so it is the touch that I love. Don’t get me wrong: I could revel in aroma, especially when savoury and complex, for hours, but if there was a choice to be made it is texture.

Isabel Ferrando, Domaine Saint Préfert/Domaine Isabel Ferrando (France). For me the first requirement is that the wine is in harmony with the dish that I am enjoying. The second is of course balance. But what counts the most for me is the ambiance that is shared with the people around the wine and the moment. There is no such thing as a “petit vin.” There are only wines that I enjoy thanks to the moments in which they were consumed.

Gilles Nicault, Long Shadows Vintners Collection (Washington). My single most important requirement in a bottle of wine I drink for pleasure is reliability. Having a wine that I can enjoy with food, with my family and friends, in the afternoon or in the evening, inside or out, feeling serious or just kicking back. This wine would not have to be a serious or prodigious wine; it does not have to be concentrated, deep red, rich or luscious. It could be pinot noir, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon blanc, syrah, chenin blanc, white, rosé, red. What I expect from a wine is a sound and well-balanced product that reminds me that gastronomy is one of the few true pleasures in life.

Mounir Saouma, Lucien Le Moine (France). I will say “Emotion.”

Mike Dobrovic, Havana Hills (South Africa). Simply put, wine is a food; it should be delicious.  Well balanced and easy to listen to, as each wine tells its own story. I personally believe that no wine is perfect. Like humans, each has its own flaw and it is sometimes that flaw that brings us closer to the understanding of life and nature.

Terry Leighton, Kalin Cellars (California). Balance and deliciousness!

Dominique Lafon, Domaine des Comtes Lafon (France). Clean, pure and elegant.

Philippe Cambie, consulting enologist (France). The wine that I am going to drink for pleasure has to be the wine that is best adapted to the dish I am going to eat, and to be the purest possible. It’s important that it present a sharpness of flavor. I do not like imposing wines; I prefer wines that respect the dish I’m eating.

Luca Currado, Cantina Vietti (Italy). When I’m relaxed, with my family, in a restaurant, and I do not have to open a bottle of my own wine, I just hope the wine is not “bretty. “ I hate brettanomyces [a spoilage yeast]; it’s really something I cannot drink. Unfortunately we see this problem more and more in wines all around the world. Many people confuse this quality as reduction. Or, even worse is when they say the wine is “typical.” But it’s not typical; brett is simply a defect. It’s something that bastardizes wine and covers its beauty and the terroir of its region. It gives all wines the same wet dog smell. To me, it’s the same thing as if a drop of gasoline was put on all the plates of a restaurant before we arrive there. It could be a super dinner in a 3-star Michelin, but all the dishes will smell like gasoline. Not for me! Please!

Louis Barruol, Château de Saint Cosme (France). A difficult as well as interesting question, as I would have many requirements! But if I would have to keep just one, it would be the ability of the wine to make me think about the region it comes from, because this is where the power of imagination is.

Joseph Davis, Arcadian Winery (California). Well, just that! I would expect that it deliver the pleasure commensurate with the price paid for the wine.

Jacques Lardière, Louis Jadot (France). Emotion.

Michael Twelftree, Two Hands Wines (Australia). Drinkability. In my eyes, you have to drink and savour the whole damn bottle. When I sum up the wines I gravitate toward the most, they are normally the wines that have an ease of drinking about them.

I think the context of a great wine can be quite misleading at times. The last thing I want to drink is a souped-up V8 full-throttle power burst every night of the week. There are wines for a time, place and mood, and a lot of great wines are sometimes consumed in the wrong context. “My 96 pointer is better than your 94 pointer”: with that scenario you would have lost me at Hello.

I think there is a time to sit, savour and respect an intriguing and complex wine over an evening with a decanter and a big stem, but there are plenty of times I just want a rewarding glass of vino, and for it to drink me more than me to drink it. I find the wines I really enjoy for this ease of conversion are mainly premier cru Chablis, Clare Valley and Tasmania dry rieslings, barberas from the Piedmont, Beaujolais and Marsannay or Savigny-lès-Beaune from Burgundy—with a weekend 3 p.m. Hendricks gin and bitter lemon with freshly cut cucumber pretty much mandatory.

Laurence Feraud, Domaine du Pegau (France). The aroma and wine length have to blow your mind and make you dream.

Russ Raney, Evesham Wood Winery (Oregon). A harmonious balance of all the wine’s components: i.e., alcohol, fruit, acid, texture, aromatics, varietal character, etc.

Pietro Ratti, Renato Ratti (Italy). BALANCE!

Dave Powell, Torbreck Winery (Australia). The single most important requirement in a bottle of wine I drink for pleasure is:  A sense of place.

Patrick Campbell, Laurel Glen Vineyards (California). If a wine doesn’t afford pleasure, I don’t drink it. If it is not balanced, it does not afford pleasure. Ergo, I don’t drink it. This is not to say, of course, that all balanced wines afford pleasure. But no other characteristic of a wine can overcome absence of balance.

Christian Seely, Quinta do Noval and Château Pichon Baron (Portugal and France). First of all, I have never drunk a wine for any other reason! If you want a one-word answer, then my answer would be “harmony.” To be a little more explicit, I would say that I am looking for freshness, balance, harmony, and drinkability. Drinkability might sound like a strange requirement, but there are wines that are impressive to taste, but which do not encourage you to drink more than a glass.

To go further, and perhaps to get a little closer to a clear answer to your question, I like wines that make me dream a little when I have them in the glass in front of me, wines that make me think of the place they come from:  a Douro red with an aromatic nose that reminds me of the wild beauty of the Douro, for example, or a great Sauternes that can transport me to the vineyard of Suduiraut at harvest time.

So it has to be good, and it has to be authentic. I have to feel that I am not wasting my time with it. This can happen on any level. It has nothing to do with prestige or price. Once that has been decided, I am ready to sit back and give it all the time it needs.

Roberto de la Mota, Mendel Wines (Argentina). Certainly it is really difficult for me to select just one requirement in a pleasant bottle of wine. Fruit, originality, typical of grape variety and terroir, intensity, structure, concentration, big length, balance and huge aromatic complexity in addition to good service (temperature, good glasses, etc.), are some of the important attributes that must be there. But the most important one in a wine drunk for pleasure is great company. Wine is a drink to share.

Abrie Beeslaar, Kanonkop Wine Estate (South Africa). I love wines with a dry finish. They make me hungry and thirsty.